New House Drama

There is always drama involved with moving to a new house, and our latest transition was certainly no exception.

It’s not much fun arriving at a new place with moving trucks and helpers to be told you can’t move in for 6 more hours. What are you supposed to do with 6 children for that time on such a small island? At night we hear people walking outside the window, so last night, my Mum shone a flashlight out at them! The first night we were here, we felt like we were in Queens or Brooklyn, sirens every few hours. We are much closer to the main road on the island, and not as isolated as our last house.

We have been busy trying to unpack as best we can, but we are still missing some furniture which we should be able to get from our landlords later tonight (fingers crossed). One of the missing pieces is the boys’ dresser and trying to find them clean clothes to wear from random different boxes each day is a joke!

You always forget how much money goes into moving, how many things you need to fix/replace/buy. Our latest is that there are no blinds in three of the rooms, no plug in our sink, no hot water in our sink, kitchen drawers that fall out, a kitchen faucet that leaks, no strings for the fans, to name but a few. The funniest is a toilet paper holder on the wall well out of reach of little children who sit on the toilet shouting, “I can’t reach the toilet paper!” at the top of their lungs. This is followed closely by the kids shower where the water temperature fluctuates randomly every few seconds between boiling hot and freezing cold. You’ve never seen my kids move so fast to get clean!

All of this is equaled out by the fact that we wake up each morning to a beautiful sunrise and (if you stand on your tiptoes and look really hard), a gorgeous ocean view. Later in the morning, the kids love playing outside in the beautifully manicured garden with fruit trees and pretty flowers all around.

Our new apartment was recently redone and is SO MUCH NICER than our last place. Breezes come through the screen doors and we are enjoying living in a much cooler home. Most of the living areas are completely unpacked and it feels great. It feels like home. (Pictures to come when we’re all settled in and I have my office all unpacked). Our new neighbors even came over last night with cookies and ice cream. It doesn’t get any better than that right?

So, the only other drama to add to the new house episode is to tell you what happened yesterday with our dryer. We had tried drying some towels on Saturday night when we arrived, and after 3 cycles, they still weren’t dry and we figured something was wrong. The next day at church, we asked the guy who had put it in if it was ready to use and he said yes. We assumed that it must just be a slow dryer and we’d have to deal with it. On Monday morning, I turned the towels on for a high heat 30 minute cycle. I put some clothes in the washer and left the room. In my bedroom, I realized I had another couple of things to wash, so I went back in to add them and was scared stiff to see a bright orange flame like light behind the dryer. It smelled like burning and I knew I had to do something fast. First instinct was the run out of there, but I knew I had to stop it while I could so I ran to the front of the dryer and opened the door to stop the dryer. I thought later that I was lucky flames didn’t shoot out and get me, but immediately the light was gone, although the burning smell remained for a while. The more I thought about it later that day, the more relieved I felt that I had gone back in there. Can you imagine if I had left to go on an errand, the whole room could have gone up in flames. The laundry is a wacko room because it doubles as the kids bathroom and is so big, that we had also been using it for all of our highly inflammable cleaning supplies and our empty cardboard boxes from the move. What great kindling.

Imagine if a fire had started in the first week we were there? The landlords, who live above us, are off island right now, can you imagine if I had to contact them and tell them that our apartment AND THEIR HOUSE had burned down? Oh my gosh! It was scary.

Well, I suppose all’s well that end’s well, except I’m still trying to get someone out here to look at the dryer, and putting a hold on laundry with a family my size isn’t the easiest thing….hooray for the drama of moving to a new house!